


To Sir, With Love

by Wind_Ryder



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Autism, Autism Spectrum, Found Family, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: “So...do you have Aspergers or are you like, full blown autistic?” Nile asks a few months after she’d watched Nicky have a meltdown in the back of their escape van. Nicky shrugs. He doesn’t know what to call himself.“I don’t know if that’s what you’re supposed to say,” he admits.“I mean, you’re high-functioning either way.” He doesn’t feel high-functioning. Sometimes he feels like he’s just pretending endlessly. Like he’s muddling his way through a game of make believe where the game is to suppress everything about him that makes him weird to others.It’s only when he’s with Joe that he feels some of the weight come off his shoulders. Can feel like he can breathe again. Can just rest and let someone else pick up all the things that he can’t, as he tries to find a place called home.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Quynh | Noriko/Andy | Andromache of Scythia
Comments: 173
Kudos: 880





	To Sir, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not related to other stories I've written.
> 
> TW: there is a very brief mention of someone trying to force themselves on Nicky. It doesn't go very far and it is barely described.

In the immediate aftermath of Booker’s betrayal, Nicky finds himself lying in bed and staring out toward the great expanse of the rest of the room. His skin tingles and his head buzzes. He tried explaining it to Joe, once, years ago. The words haven’t gotten much better in the years since science started to investigate the phenomenon, but the closest he’s managed to explain it is a shiver. There’s a shiver in his brain. He knows it’s not real. Knows that his brain is still exactly as it always is, sending electrical signals this way and that in order to keep the rest of his body functioning. But it feels like it's shivering. He closes his eyes and the invisible tremor makes itself known beneath the skin of his arms. Around the coils of his gut. Between his thighs. His whole body is still and motionless, but he can feel it. He can feel the shiver. 

Joe’s arm tightens around him as he sleeps soundly at Nicky’s back. It helps. It helps tremendously. Nicky presses close. Cuddles in deep. He hugs Joe’s arm close to his body, clinging to Joe’s thumb where it pokes up expectantly. Nicky squeezes it. The shiver doesn’t stop. 

He doesn’t think he’s okay. 

* * *

When they first met, and met properly, Nicky couldn’t breathe. He’d been wandering the desert, tripping over his feet and scratching at his arms. He tried getting air into his chest but it refused to stay there. He collapsed as dark spots splashed like spilled ink all across his vision. He gagged and wheezed. He swallowed air and tried to hold onto it, but it just vanished as if it had never been there to begin with. Joe, he’d been Yusuf then, found him after he’d stripped himself of all his clothes. The cloth had been choking him. Choking or strangling or confining. It didn’t matter what it was doing, but it felt harsh and abrasive against his skin and Nicky tore it from his body and sobbed around breaths he couldn’t take just as Joe-Yusuf- _Joe_ came and stood before him. 

Joe killed him. 

When Nicky woke up, Joe was still there, but the breaths came easier. As if his lungs could only remember how to work after death had seized them tight. So Nicky asked, polite as can be, if he would kill him again. Joe didn’t. “You’re naked,” he said instead. 

Nicky didn’t care. He was tired, and hungry, and sore. He pitched forward and expected an abyss to swallow him whole.

Instead, Joe caught him, and never let him go. 

* * *

The abbot hated Nicky’s hands. And his toes. He _hated_ Nicky’s toes. Nicky loved transcribing scrolls. He relished in the opportunity to sit in the too warm study in the brightest room in the Abbey, just listening to the sound of his quill as it neatly scratched letters onto parchment. But while he transcribed, his toes wiggled beneath him. When he inspected his work, his fingers tugged on loose strings, or sometimes they played with the paper weight-rocks on his desk, or sometimes they tap-tap-tapped on the hard wood beneath his palm. The abbot loathed the sounds Nicky made. He swatted at Nicky’s fingers with a switch. He tied Nicky’s ankles to his chair. Once, Nicky started humming one of the psalms under his breath and was beaten for his blasphemy. 

Years later, when Nicky is writing receipts for Joe’s blacksmith business, he wiggles his fingers and toes at his leisure and Joe never once thwacks him with a switch. When Nicky hums some long forgotten tune he cannot remember the name of, Joe kisses his head and tells him it sounds nice. Even if Nicky had been trying to be quiet. Even if he hadn’t meant to be heard. Nicky’s cheeks blush and his head ducks down in embarrassment, but Joe picks up the song where he left off and soon they’re singing together. 

It feels right. 

* * *

Joe killed a man who tried to force himself on Nicky in the Caribbean. They were working at a tavern, selling rum in Tortuga while Andy searched for a ship with a diving bell. Nicky had stepped out just for a moment, arms full of used dishes to clean, and the man had snatched him back the back of his neck and thrown him against a wall. Joe found them, Nicky dazed and dumbfounded, the man rutting up against his spine, barely half a minute later. He’d heard the clatter of metal pitchers and mugs and come running. 

“Nicolo?” Joe asked once he’d finished breaking the man’s neck. Nicky blinked at him, stunned still. His skin felt strange. Like it was moving, when he could see very well that it wasn’t. 

“I don’t understand,” Nicky said. “Why did he…?” Nicky’s hands rubbed at his arms. His teeth chattered. He started to pick up his scattered dishes, but Joe stopped him. He took Nicky’s face between his palms. 

“Are you all right?” he asked. 

“I don’t understand,” Nicky said again. 

There wasn’t an answer Joe could give that made sense. 

It still doesn’t make any sense. 

* * *

They're leaving the cluster-fuck in Sudan when Nicky takes hold of Joe's wrist. He feels off kilter, uncertain. His head is spinning. He shivers unconsciously and even as Andy brushes past them he knows Joe will stay behind. Joe always stays with him. "But where are the girls?" Nicky asks, quiet and desperate. There should have been girls here. They confirmed it. They had satellite images and heat images. And the shoes. All those shoes. He doesn't understand. Where did the shoes come from? 

"It was a lie, Nicky," Joe murmurs. "Copley lied." 

"There...there really aren't any girls?" Nicky glances back the way they came. All those guards. All those men he'd killed. The ones he'd sniped from so far out. The ones they'd slaughtered before the ambush. They had all been...bait? No. That's not the right word. They'd been offered up. They'd been expendable to Copley. Copley had let them stay on the outside of the perimeter, had them dress like insurgents, just to die. Copley had to have known they all were going to die. Because he planned that kill room...so all those people outside were just playing pretend. And there weren't any girls. "Why would he do that?" 

"Because he's an asshole," Booker grunts as he steps in line with them. He claps Nicky on the shoulder. "C'mon brother. Let's go." 

They go. 

And later, later Nicky will think back to what Booker said and wonder if Booker was an asshole too. 

The answer is probably yes. 

* * *

Nile finds Nicky, a few days after Booker’s exile, standing in the center of a room and staring at a chair with no one in it. “Hey man, you okay?” she asks when Nicky hasn’t moved for nearly thirty seconds. He keeps staring and staring. 

She steps around to get a good look at his face, and he flinches when she appears in his line of sight. As if he hadn’t heard her. As if he’s just now realizing she’s a person occupying the same space as him. He smiles, vague and awkward. “Would you like something to eat?” he asks. Then he leaves for the kitchen, not waiting for a reply. 

He cooks something she’s never had before and she praises it with every bite. His fingers don’t stay still as he watches her eat. They tap-tap-tap the whole time. She wants to ask, but she doesn’t. 

She’d be fucked up too if her brother betrayed her. 

Everyone’s got a right to process at their own speed. 

* * *

Nicky didn’t start with a sniper rifle. His first gun was the equivalent of a handheld cannon. It had no degree of accuracy and left such a rattle through his bones that he didn’t care for the feeling at all. He hated the invention. Hated the noise. Hated the weight. If he was going to kill someone, he wanted to know it would work. He didn’t want to waste all his time loading a stick up with blasting powder on the off chance that maybe - just maybe - it might blow someone up. 

But when he was handed his first proper sniper rifle, he was mystified. He asked his instructor dozens of questions. He stayed up reading books on mathematics to understand exactly how it worked. He and Joe tinkered in a little back-yard forge they’d built at one of their safe houses to play with ammo types and methods for silencing the gun. 

They brought their designs to an old mountain range far away from people. Joe hiked out farther and farther from Nicky, putting up targets for Nicky to hit and making progressively more excited reactions whenever Nicky succeeded. 

As he lay on the cold earth, Nicky breathed in deep. He held his body perfectly still. The back of his head shivered and wiggled, but he didn’t let any of that slip out to the rest of him. He kept his attention on his target. He let the math run through his mind. Wind speed, trajectories, distance, the spin of the earth. 

The possibilities ran endlessly through him, but his body stayed still. He shot, and kept shooting until all the targets were gone and Joe was on his way back to him. Joe found him lying on the ground, head tilted up to the sky. Fingers tapping against the dirt as he breathed in and out. “What’s it like?” Joe asked. He traced a hand up and down Nicky’s chest. It felt warm and perfect. 

Nicky smiled. He doesn’t explain. 

* * *

Their first disaster mission happens almost three years into Nile’s run with the team. Everything goes to shit so fast and with such breathtaking simplicity that Nile’s vomiting while running to the escape vehicle. She barely manages to get into it without getting shot _again,_ and the van’s careening into the night before she can even work out who’s next to her and not. 

Andy’s apparently driving, and she gets a good look around to see Nicky and Joe curled around each other only a hand’s width away. Nicky’s thrashing in Joe’s arms. His legs are jerking. One of his hands is curled into a fist and he keeps trying to strike himself in the head. His eyes are squeezed closed and he’s not quite sobbing, but Nile doesn’t know what else to call his tear stained face.

She’d lost track of Nicky and Joe in the cluster fuck. She’d seen them get blown up at least once. Seen Joe throw Andy bodily out of the line of fire just before bullets came shooting at them from all angles. Then this. “What-what’s going—”

Joe looks up at her, angry and apologetic in one. He shakes his head sharply and her mouth snaps shut. Joe’s trying to hold onto Nicky’s wrist, to keep him from beating his head even as Nicky seems to categorically fall apart in the looming dark of their escape. 

She doesn’t know what to say, and it seems that there’s nothing to be gained by trying to get involved. She tucks herself into her side of the van and tries to block the whole night from her memory. 

It doesn’t work nearly as well as she’d like. 

* * *

Nicky was the last one Booker met. It wasn’t intentional. Not really. Joe had met Booker in a market. Andy had already been home when Joe managed to convince Booker to come back with him. Nicky was at church praying for his sins. 

When he returned home, Booker had already been taken through the general explanation of who and what they were, and all Nicky had to do was introduce himself. It was a bad day though. Had been a ‘bad day’ for weeks. The constant rushing from one place to another. The endless jostling and shoving about. The chating and governmental propaganda that cheered on Napoleon’s army even as they bickered about the defeat in Russia. The angry voices at the church who had criticized Nicky from even entering. The blanched look of the priests who nervously clutched at their silver whenever the crowds got too loud. Nicky walked into the house that his family commandeered for Booker’s search, and when he saw his new brother he was too overwhelmed to even speak his name. 

“This is Nicolo,” Joe introduced for him. “He’s not feeling too well today, so don’t hold it against him.” Nicky tried to smile, but his mouth didn’t move the way he wanted it to. He wanted to go to Joe and be held together. He felt like he was about to fly apart, his skin crawled and his heart pounded painfully inside of him. “Andromache...do you—”

“—I got this, go on,” Andy said. Joe took Nicky by the hand and led him away from Booker. He murmured soft questions to Nicky just for Nicky to hear. They curled up under the blankets together. The shutters were closed and darkness descended all around them. It was warm and quiet in Joe’s arms. Nicky breathed deep. He covered one ear with his palm and focused on the feeling of Joe’s chest expanding and contracting with each pull of air. 

“You’ll be all right,” Joe promised. 

And he was. 

* * *

Nicky liked rocks. As he and Joe travelled through Syria, sometimes Nicky would find a rock that was particularly interesting. He would pick it up and turn it over and over in his hands. The reason for his preference changed depending on the rock. A few he liked because they were river smooth, despite there being no water source as far as the eye could see. Others, he chose because of how they glistened in the sun. They sparkled like gems. He held them up and watched as they reflected the sun right back out. He grinned at their dazzling appearance, sliding them into his pockets like currency to be exchanged. 

At night, when he and Joe settled by the fire, he’d take his rocks out and line them up in order of preference. Many were coated in dirt or sand. He carved at them with his thumb nails, digging into the grime and polishing with the cuff of his sleeve or the spread of his pants over his thigh. Joe watched him work in silence, poking at the fire and observing through the flickering flame. 

It was almost four months into their tentative acquaintance that Nicky built up the courage to offer Joe the prettiest rock he’d found. He liked how it felt on his palm. Smooth and soft and pleasant. When Nicky wrapped his fingers around it, he felt like each tuck or curl of his knuckles settled perfectly on the stone. He offered the rock up with blushing cheeks and a half chewed lip. “Do you want it?” Nicky asked nervously. 

Joe took the rock. He rolled it over in his hand. He felt the smooth sides and tested the way he could hold it, tucked between his fingers and palm. “Thank you, Nicolo,” Joe said. 

Three hundred years later, Nicky would find that same precious rock tied to a chain and made into a charm that Joe keeps on the sheath of his scimitar. He won’t find the words to say when he sees it. Joe will notice, though, and grin. He’ll say: “I never want to be parted from anything you give me,” and Nicky will reach into his pocket and produce another rock. 

They’ll keep a collection of Nicky’s favorites in one of their safe-houses, and sometimes Nicky will run his hands over every single rock and remember the exact moment he got them. As if the memories themselves were engraved on the stones.

* * *

Nicky was asleep when Booker brought his concerns to Joe. He was sprawled out under a mountain of blankets. The weight pressing him to the earth. Grounding him in a way only Joe’s arm around his back had ever managed to accomplish. Joe wasn’t beside him, though. He was tending to their campfire, sketching and keeping watch for the rest of them. Nicky wasn’t supposed to hear the conversation, either.

He had woken up, feeling like something was missing, when he heard Booker’s voice. “Don’t you think you’re taking advantage of him?” He didn’t sound accusative. There’s no anger there. Nicky didn’t think he sounded angry anyway. Maybe more confused. Concerned? Nicky rolled over. Both Booker and Joe had their backs to him. They don’t notice. 

“You make it sound like he’s incapable of making his own choices,” Joe said, and Nicky knew that tone of voice. It was how Joe sounded right before he lost his temper. Nicky’s fingers twitched forward. He wanted to touch Joe. To feel the heat of his leg under his hand. To make him smile. He liked Joe’s smile. 

“Isn’t he? You know he’s touched in the head right?” 

“Sebastien,” Joe said, lowering the stick he’d been poking the fire with. He turned, and Nicky could see the tight expression Joe had now. The way his brows bent low. His nostrils flaring. Anxiety burst in Nicky’s chest. His hand flexed. He slowly started to reach out. “I’m going to say this once, little brother. There is _nothing_ wrong with his head. You will never say that again.” Joe stood. Nicky froze, watching as Joe turned to face him. He must see that Nicky was awake because his expression shifted just a little. He walked toward Nicky and settled down beside him. He nudged at Nicky’s body until Nicky rolled onto his shoulder. Joe wrapped up behind him, holding Nicky close. Keeping him warm. “I love you,” Joe whispered.

“I love you too,” Nicky whispered back. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.” He kissed the nape of Nicky’s neck. “Go to sleep. I have you.” He does, so Nicky let sleep take him. 

If in the morning he gave Booker a wider berth, well, that was just because he didn’t know what else to do. 

He didn’t want to make Booker mad. 

* * *

Nicky loved Quynh. Loved her in a way he’d never loved anyone else before. She went rock hunting with him. She played games with him. She taught him about archery and combat and she relished in the teaching. Nicky asked question after question. How does this work? How does that? Quynh answered them all with rigid focus and determination. If she didn’t know an answer, she told him so. When they had the opportunity to find out the answer, they either experimented on their own or they found a more educated fellow to instruct them. 

They spent hours sitting together, notching arrows and discussing techniques. Quynh showed him how to use her style of blade. He relished in the chance to learn more. When his lessons were done, he rushed to Joe and told him everything he knew. Joe sat, smiling and patient, listening to him as Nicky regurgitated his lessons. 

Andy usually sat nearby, smiling and shaking her head at them. (Nicky asked Joe what that meant, and Joe said: exasperation filled with love.) She loved them. Loved him. It made him feel warm inside. Warm and excited and happy enough that he forgot the abbot’s chastisements on _quiet_ hands and he waved them in front of his chest. He flapped them faster and faster, _me, me, me,_ speaking so quick and with such enthusiasm that Joe’s mouth spread in the widest grin yet. Joe kissed the top of his head when they’re all done talking, words echoing in the pleasant spaces of Nicky’s mind. The next time Nicky thinks to pray, he’ll pray that they can keep living just like this. Forever and ever and ever, amen.

* * *

Nile asks when Nicky and Joe first started to become “Nicky and Joe.” When they first became a duality that could never be removed from one another. A partnership that’s lasted centuries. Nicky tells her that it would have happened a lot sooner if he hadn’t been so stupid. Joe wraps his arms around Nicky from behind, tucking his chin over Nicky’s shoulder and tickling Nicky’s collarbone with his beard. “He wasn’t stupid,” Joe corrects with a grin and a kiss to the underside of Nicky’s chin. “He was just a little confused.” 

“Confused how?” Nile asks, grinning with that sparkly-eyed grin of hers that makes Nicky think of Bugs Bunny when he’s about to engage in some gossip. 

Nicky’s face feels warm as Joe rocks them side to side. Joe’s teasing him, playful and sweet. Butterflies burst in Nicky’s stomach. He closes his eyes and laughs a little too loud as Joe keeps jostling them both. “He thought I was just being nice,” Joe reveals. “When I brought him food, and clothes, and gifts. I scoured the entire desert looking for the perfect rock to present to my love, and when I gave it to him, he blushed so sweet and asked me why I bothered, and then I realized that I just wasn’t being clear enough.” Joe presses his nose to the crook of Nicky’s throat. He kisses his way up to Nicky’s ear as Nicky giggles and tries to pull away with half-hearted protestations that leave him snuggling even closer to Joe’s chest. “The secret, Nile, is to just tell him how you feel.” Joe lets him go just enough to spin Nicky about and look him straight in the eye. He cups Nicky’s cheeks. “So I took him and I said, ‘I love you.’ And he asked me—” 

“Like a brother?” Nicky echoes from eight hundred years back, blushing from mortification but cherishing the smile on Joe’s face. Nile snorts loud enough that it could challenge a pig. She presses one hand to her face. And Joe rolls his eyes toward the heavens. 

“So I said, ‘No! Not like a brother. Like my wife!’ But that was wrong too you see,” Joe reveals. “Because then he reminded me that he’s not a woman, and I am unmarried. So I told him, ‘Like a husband then. Will you be my husband?’ and he said ‘yes.’ And promptly died of embarrassment.” 

“Not like, really, though right?” Nile asked. 

“Close enough,” Nicky confirms. Joe kisses away the swiveling expression Nicky’s lips had tried to make. He smooshes their nose together. He wiggles them, back and forth back and forth, then kisses Nicky’s lips as Nicky laughs again. It’s sloppy and wet and full of teeth, and Nicky doesn’t think he can be any happier if he tried. 

Nicky still has the rock Joe gave him too. It has a special place in a drawer in their house in Malta. Nestled in an old ring box like a diamond. 

* * *

They found Andy six months after Quynh had been lost to the sea. She’d murdered her way through most of the people who threw Quynh overboard, and by the time Joe and Nicky manage to catch up with her, she’s well on her way to murdering another man. Joe hauled her from the shattered body she’d been tormenting. Nicky crumpled to his knees at the man’s side, trying to figure out if there’s a way to stop the bleeding or save his life. She yelled at them both, telling them about Quynh even as Nicky tried to save the soul she’d been torturing. 

It was too late for him, though, and the man died staring up at Nicky and calling him a monster. The three of them backtrack out of the woods and find a safe place to hide and go over what exactly had happened since the last time they were all together. Nicky rubbed his arms to try and keep warm. He shivered badly, feeling that same shiver crawl up toward his brain. He couldn’t think. Everything felt wrong. Off. He looked at Andy’s side and Quynh wasn’t there, and Quynh was always supposed to be there, and why would anyone want to hurt Quynh? Quynh was laughter and sunshine and stories. She was violence and teasing joy. She was his friend. 

His best friend. 

“I don’t understand,” Nicky said. Joe and Andy turned to look at him. “Why would they...I don’t understand.” 

_“You’re_ the one who goes to church, Nicolo. What don’t you understand?” Andy asked. Joe hissed her name, threw an arm out to bar her way, but she ignored it. She shoved past him. She stomped toward Nicky and caught a handful of his shirt. She shook him. His head wobbles this way and that upon his neck. He felt dizzy. Off kilter. His mouth opened and closed like a fish underwater. Like Quynh. Quynh was now a fish underwater. 

A laugh bubbled up from his throat. He tried to swallow it, but couldn’t. Rage, it has to be rage, rage choked all the love from Andry’s mind. She howled with it, enunciating her fury as she raised a hand and struck Nicky had enough that the laugh turned to a sob. Joe shouted. He separated them. Throwing himself between them as Nicky laughed and cried and shook on the ground, staring up at Andy and Joe and pressing his filthy palms to his cursed lips. 

Joe and Andy were shouting at each other. Back and forth, back and forth. They struck out at each other and tears streamed down Nicky’s face as he tried to understand. Why would they put her under water? She couldn’t breathe under water. But she couldn’t die either. Why would they put her there? It wouldn’t kill her, it would just hurt her. Why would they want to just hurt her forever? Why couldn’t they just leave her in a cell? Why did they have to put her in the ocean? It didn’t make sense. Why Quynh and not Andy? Why not both of them? “Why were you left behind?” Nicky asked. 

Andy screamed with such rage that Nicky never asked again. 

But he’s too stupid to understand. He wished he did. 

* * *

Nicky was a picky eater. Quynh teased and mocked him, laughing when he turned his nose up at food and crossed his arms over his chest. “You like this though,” she’d say. “I’ve seen you eat it before.” 

And yes, sometimes that happened. “My mouth doesn’t want it,” he’d reply. Because it didn’t matter how hungry he was, if his mouth didn’t want the food on its tongue, he couldn’t bear the idea of it. The mere thought of eating lamb, or pork, or eggplant at times was so utterly repulsive that it made him sick at the mere thought. 

Then, there would be whole weeks where the only food that he wanted to eat was lamb, or pork, or eggplant. Quynh decided it was an adorable trait, grinning when he issued his standard comment on the matter and doing her utmost to help him. 

Four hundred years after Quynh disappeared, Nicky sat in diners or mall cafeterias and thought she’d like them. She’d enjoy taking him to places like these, and trying all the possibilities. Ironically, thinking about what Quynh would like to eat with him always made Nicky un-hungry. His mouth rejected any concept of food. Instead he just sat there. Waiting for a friend who’d never come back. 

* * *

“So...do you have Aspergers or are you like, full blown autistic?” Nile asks a few months after she’d watched Nicky have a meltdown in the back of their escape van. Nicky shrugs. He doesn’t know what to call himself. But he’s read the books and he’s followed the various autism spectrum related documentation. He’s seen the articles about vaccination and autism and he had a mild panic when he thought he might finally have an understanding that there’s a name for something he is...only for it to be discounted because if autism is caused by vaccination, he certainly had never been vaccinated before. But then the news came out that the research was _wrong,_ and vaccines _don’t_ cause autism, and it made it possible again and he became more anxious because he didn’t know if he should be grateful or not grateful. He just felt strange. 

“I don’t know if that’s what you’re supposed to say,” he admits. 

“I mean, you’re high-functioning either way.” He doesn’t feel high-functioning. Sometimes he feels like he’s just pretending endlessly. Like he’s muddling his way through a game of make believe where the game is to suppress everything about him that makes him weird to others. No flapping around Booker, it makes him think Nicky’s a child. Be strong for Nile, she _is_ a child and still needs support. Don’t ask Andy too many questions, she thinks about Quynh and it bothers her. 

It’s only when he’s with Joe that he feels some of the weight come off his shoulders. Can feel like he can breathe again. Can just rest and let someone else pick up all the things that he can’t. If he doesn’t feel up to talking, Joe never makes him talk. If he doesn’t want to eat something, Joe never makes him eat. If he just wants to be held and to stop thinking about the world, Joe holds him close and never lets the world crush him like it wants to. 

He feels like a fraud. Like he’s played the game so much that he can’t actually differentiate between what would be easier for him and easier for them. But at the same time, he knows full well what’s easier for him _isn’t_ easier for them. And the idea that he’s a burden hurts worse than anything else. 

“I don’t like that phrase,” he murmurs. “High-functioning.” 

“What should I say instead?” Nile asks. She says it softly, gently. She’s looking at him with her big Bugs Bunny eyes, eager to be of use. He wishes, suddenly, that he isn’t here. He doesn’t want to talk about it. 

“I don’t know. But I don’t...I don’t like it.” He walks away then. Walks out of the room and goes to lie down. He naps for most of the day, dozing in and out until he wakes to find Joe sprawled out next to him. Joe’s sketching quietly, and at some point Nicky’s rolled over and rested his head on Joe’s lap. He makes a gargling noise as he comes back to consciousness, and Joe’s hand comes down to thread through his hair. 

“Sleep well?” Joe asks. Nicky hums in agreement. He snuggles in close, inhaling the warm smell of his husband. “Nile thinks you’re mad at her.” 

“Huh?” Nicky sits up, blinking quickly to push the sleep from his eyes. He rubs at them when it takes too long. Joe helps stroke his hair back into something approaching decent. 

“She’s all sad right now, says that she offended you and you walked out on her?” 

“I was tired,” Nicky says. He bites his lip. Anxiety starts to build in his chest. He glances over his shoulder. Joe pats his shoulder to make him look back. 

“I know. She told me what happened. I told her I didn’t think you were mad. Are you?”

“No. I’ll tell her.” Joe just nods, leaving his hand on Nicky’s shoulder. His thumb strokes back and forth a few times. The anxiety keeps building. He hates talking sometimes. No one ever knows what he intends. He feels like he’s a mess. He’s never doing anything right. He’s always wrong. He’s always messing up. He—

“Nicolo.” Nicky looks up at Joe’s perfect face. “She’ll understand. It’s okay. Yeah?” Nicky folds himself down so he’s resting his cheek against Joe’s chest. Joe wraps his arms around Nicky’s back. “We love you just the way you are.” 

“I should be better,” Nicky mumbled into Joe’s shirt. 

“Everyone makes mistakes. Yours didn’t get us strapped to a table in an evil pharmaceutical company’s labs or end up with anybody’s blood on your hands. I think you can cut yourself some slack here.” 

It helps. But only a little. Other people’s mistakes didn’t mean as much to Nicky as his own. And Booker...Booker was his brother. It still hurt that he wasn’t there with them too.

* * *

Doctor Kozak scans their brains in between sample collections of nerves and tissues and muscles. She removes a whole organ from Nicky’s middle while Joe sleeps of the effect of his own impromptu appendectomy to his left. The scan goes almost unnoticed in relation to all the rest. 

But at one point, Kozak is looking at the pictures she’s taken and she frowns at the one of Nicky’s brain and Nicky feels like the broken specimen in the room. Kozak even calls Merrick in to confer as she points at the different frontal-posterior white matter connections that are not as robust as they are on Joe’s scan. 

“Hey,” Joe says, just quiet enough that it’s clear he’s not trying to attract Merrick or Kozak’s attention. “I like your white matter connections just the way they are.” He smiles at Nicky even as Nicky wonders why God chose him for his immortality. Why him and not someone better? Someone normal? 

Merrick wants to know if Kozak cuts into the white matter connections if they’ll grow back stronger. They don’t knock Joe out for Nicky’s impromptu brain surgery. Nicky listens to him screaming for them to stop even as the blade saws into Nicky’s head. At some point, Nicky passes out or dies. He wakes up long after his brain and skull and hair have all gone back to the way they were before. Another scan confirms what Nicky could have told them if they asked: It didn’t matter how many times they broke his brain, it always grew back the same as it was before. 

“Nicky?” Joe calls. His fingers are straining uselessly in Nicky’s general direction. 

Nicky trembles a little. He tilts his head so he can look at Joe, and he feels like crying. He wants to go home. He wants to go home right now. 

He’s so tired of living like this. 

* * *

Quynh comes back to them almost ten years after they left Booker behind. She’s _with_ Booker when she arrives. She opens the door to their home and everyone flies to the nearest weapon, only to stop and stare as Booker and Quynh re-enter their lives. 

Nicky stands to the side, watching as Andy and Joe get their hugs. As Nile shakes Quynh’s hand and is drawn into Quynh’s warm embrace. As Joe quietly starts to talk to Booker about what he was doing there and whether he should be forgiven or not. He didn’t find Quynh after all, apparently she found him. 

By the time that everyone’s had their turn, and Quynh extracts herself from them to approach Nicky, he’s trembling a little. He doesn’t know what to say. His mind espouses no words. His heart pounds so hard it hurts. He reaches for her, feeling her against his fingertips. He bends his head to touch her shoulder and she embraces him with her long arms. 

“Mine,” She whispers into his ear, and he smiles wetly and shakes so violently as pure _elation_ overwhelms him. He hugs her so close. So very very close. He presses his head to her and she sighs as they snuggle in tighter. She’s a perfect weight in his arms. He never wants to let her go. Never wants to give her room to be with the others. He imagines, wildly, that they could just run off and mount their horses and spend a day just riding through the countryside.

But he knows that’s not going to happen. So he lets her go and holds her hand and compromises to just be with her, flapping at every new story he gets the chance to share. Bouncing on his toes whenever she looks at him and he can give her a kiss. Fingers fluttering this way and that and squeezing her hand to his like it’s the only thing that matters. 

He goes outside with her toward the end of the evening and they talk in low undertones, searching for the right rock to celebrate their reunion. They find a shiny little bit of red-quartz that’s just about palm sized. He gives it to her and she cradles it to her chest. “I’ve missed you, my brother,” she tells him. 

“I missed you too,” he replies. “Please don’t go again.” he doesn’t know if that’s fair to ask, since she didn’t choose to leave before. He almost apologizes, rephrases. Tries to backtrack, but she hugs him. 

“Not if I have a say in it.” It’s great.

* * *

Forty years before he betrayed them to Merrick, Nicky and Booker spent a week visiting vineyards in the south of France. Joe wanted to sketch the countryside, and it wasn’t often that Nicky and Booker had time together, just the two of them. Booker had a tendency to be overbearing. He talked over Nicky. He asked him if he was sure whenever Nicky made a suggestion to do something. He stopped Nicky from talking to people that he felt were suspicious or unethical. 

Nicky wanted to buy a bottle of wine from one vineyard in particular, and Booker intervened before he could make his purchase. He haggled on Nicky’s behalf, speaking in rapid fire french that left Nicky standing there awkward and confused as he hugged the bottle between his hands. When the transaction was completed, Booker muttered about not letting Nicky wander off on his own, and anger overrode any of Nicky’s previous concerns. 

He waited until they were out of ear shot from the other visitors to the vineyard, and then he dragged Booker even farther away for good measure. “I’m not a child,” Nicky hissed, squeezing the bottle’s neck far tighter than was advisable. 

“You were just going to pay full price for that! It’s absurd!” Booker scoffed, shaking his head. “You can’t just accept the first number they offer—”

“—I know how haggling works, Booker,” Nicky refuted. “I had the money. I didn’t mind paying it.” 

“They’re taking advantage of you.” And that phrase strikes a familiar refrain that Nicky had heard so many times before. He grit his teeth, forcing himself to breathe calmly and steadily as he took a few steps closer to his _little_ brother. 

“I am _not_ a child,” he repeated. “I can make my own decisions. I don’t need your help.” 

Booker wasn’t one to back down though. And without Joe or Andy there to intercede on Nicky’s behalf, Booker met Nicky’s derision with an equally irritated: “Clearly you do!” 

“Just because I do something _my_ way and not _your_ way does not mean it’s wrong. I can make my own decisions. My own choices. It doesn’t affect you either way.” 

“So I’m just supposed to let you waste your money because you’re too stupid to haggle?” Nicky flinched at the word. It was a word that followed him all his life. A word that would never let him go. 

“I’m not stupid,” he said softly. Then, rallying, he said it strong. “I’m _not_ stupid. If you can trust me in battle, you can trust me when we are not fighting an enemy. I’m not stupid Booker. And _you’re_ smart enough to know that if you think hard enough.” 

His words seemed to jostle Booker just a little. He blinked and winced, awkward and uncertain. He chews his bottom lip for a moment before saying: “I just don’t want you to get hurt, Nicky…” 

“Ask me,” Nicky suggested in turn. “If something bothers you...if you see me doing something that you’re not sure of, _ask_ me. I never lie to you.”

Booker promised. 

And next time, when he saw Nicky buying something, or doing something wasteful and strange, he asked why. And when Nicky explained, he nodded. Stayed quiet. And accepted Nicky for who he was. 

They even start to play a game, and Nicky loses more money to their silly bets with each other than he ever had on a haggling scheme gone wrong. But whenever Booker asked if it was still okay, Nicky smiled and said: “I have no need for money, it is nice to give it to someone who deserves it once and awhile.” Booker never had an argument for that. 

* * *

His parents thought he was a demon. They left him out in the woods to die, and the abbot found him and dedicated his life to making a proper christian out of him. His last effort had been to tell Nicky to go fight the war and get his absolution from the Pope. It had been the only thing the abbot could think of to ensure Nicky’s soul would be saved at the end of all things. 

And when Nicky died, he was brought back time and time and again to a world the abbot would never approve of. A world with a muslim man as his lover and touch stone in all things. A world where two non-christian women lived with them and ruled them as their leaders. A world where a dark skinned woman called him brother, and sat with him in church. A world where a spoiled frenchman tried to end their lives, and they still accepted him as family. 

The abbot wouldn’t like the world Nicky lives in. 

But that’s all right. 

Sitting with his family, Nicky tells Joe: “I didn’t like the world I lived in, either.” He doesn’t need to explain any more. Joe understands. He always does. He wraps an arm around Nicky’s shoulders and they look to the future. 

And Nicky loves that they’ll get there together. 


End file.
